Wall Street Journal – Dr. William Happer is Wrong Again

Letter sent to Wall Street Journal on March 27, 2012 in reply to Dr. William Happer’s op-ed: Global Warming Models Are Wrong Again which should have been titled “Dr. William Happer is Wrong Again”. My LTE has not been published. I am not surprised.

Scientists tell us that heat-trapping carbon emissions are rising, as are global temperatures, sea levels and the risks associated with climate change. But regular readers of the Wall Street Journal’s opinion page are likely to have exactly the opposite impression.

By my count, over more than a two year period starting in late 2008, the Journal published only 4 opinion pieces that supported the overwhelming scientific consensus on climate change, but 39 that questioned it, attacked scientists or otherwise misrepresented scientific findings. Those trends have continued in recent months. Meanwhile, 97 percent of publishing climate scientists agree that human activities are significantly altering our climate. And our own National Academy of Sciences tells us, “Climate change is occurring, is caused largely by human activities, and poses significant risks for—and in many cases is already affecting—a broad range of human and natural systems.”

The latest op-ed attempting to contradict the science is from physicist William Happer who makes the classic mistake of cherry-picking an individual year and counting forward from there to make spurious claims about global temperature trends.

In reality, the past 35 years have all been hotter than average globally, meaning half of all Americans have never even lived during a year with average or below-average temperatures. Four independent scientific agencies confirm the unmistakable warming trend, as did an analysis (the BEST project) from a former climate change skeptic.

The Journal’s readers would benefit from more high-quality information about the science and less spin from ideologues.

5 Responses

Let’s compare Dr. Happer’s factual column on the global warming hoax to the simplistic response you took one month to write.

By WILLIAM HAPPER
During a fundraiser in Atlanta earlier this month, President Obama is reported to have said: “It gets you a little nervous about what is happening to global temperatures. When it is 75 degrees in Chicago in the beginning of March, you start thinking. On the other hand, I really have enjoyed nice weather.”

What is happening to global temperatures in reality? The answer is: almost nothing for more than 10 years. Monthly values of the global temperature anomaly of the lower atmosphere, compiled at the University of Alabama from NASA satellite data, can be found at the website http://www.drroyspencer.com/latest-global-temperatures/. The latest (February 2012) monthly global temperature anomaly for the lower atmosphere was minus 0.12 degrees Celsius, slightly less than the average since the satellite record of temperatures began in 1979.

The lack of any statistically significant warming for over a decade has made it more difficult for the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and its supporters to demonize the atmospheric gas CO2 which is released when fossil fuels are burned. The burning of fossil fuels has been one reason for an increase of CO2 levels in the atmosphere to around 395 ppm (or parts per million), up from preindustrial levels of about 280 ppm.

[snip]

Mandia: Dr. Happer is notorious for being incorrect. He may know physics but he is very bad at climate or is trying to knowingly mislead the public. He has ZERO peer-reviewed climate papers compared to the thousands published each month that support the settled fact that humans are warming the climate. The fact that he uses a ten year air temperature record to try to convince shows how poorly he understands climatic trends. Please do not post here if you are going to lead with “hoax”. The earth is round, smoking is linked to lung cancer, and humans are causing global warming.

One month? I submitted this LTE one day after Happer’s letter and posted on this blog a few days after that.

If CO2 is heavier than air, how does it remain in the atmosphere to cause “global warming”? If the earth’s ecosystem didn’t naturally remove CO2, wouldn’t we have all suffocated long ago from volcanic eruptions, forest fires, industry, auto’s, etc? CO2 is naturally scrubbed out by rains and the ocean, which, btw, covers 3/4s of the planet’s surface. Again, CO2 is heavier than air. Hello? Wake up all you ‘scientific geniuses’.
Peer reviewed — or Peer pressure i.e.writing ‘for’ their peers to gain acceptance, recognition, grants, etc.?
What a circus.

Mandia: Matt, even the most ardent climate science deniers accept that CO2 concentrations are rapidly increasing. Most of those also accept that 394 ppm is a value that has not happened in nature for at least 400,000 years. This ship has sailed. You need to do a serious investigation of this subject before you continue commenting on blogs.

Oxygen is heavier than nitrogen, care to explain how the oxygen remains in the air? Water is heavier than nitrogen AND oxygen, care to explain how that remains in the air for so long? Or maybe you can explain how SO2 even gets INTO the air, considering its heavier than nitrogen, oxygen, and water put together (or, if you so wish, heavier than CO2 and water put together).

Mandia: FYI: A water vapor molecule has an atomic mass of 18 amu while air being a mixture of nitrogen gas (N2) and (O2) has an average mass per molecule of 29 amu.

And yes, the earth slowly removes excess CO2. Problem being the “slowly”. If you add CO2 into the atmosphere at rates that far exceed the ability of the earth’s biosphere (excluding the atmosphere) to take it up again, it will increase. How do you think in the past CO2 concentrations in the air have been several factors higher than today?

I’ve met ignorant people many times before, but you are really at the most extreme end possible!